


just like home, not alone

by Nielrian



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Fluff with an angst chaser, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 18:00:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18078296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nielrian/pseuds/Nielrian
Summary: Michael comes awake in the hazy, pre-dawn hours of the morning and knows instinctively that something isn’t right.





	just like home, not alone

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything in 84 years but these two have stolen my heart so here's 2200 words of semi-sexual intimacy. Just because I can.
> 
> Title from ["First Winter"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLGNAIuds3k) by Wrabel

Michael comes awake in the hazy, pre-dawn hours of the morning and knows instinctively that something isn’t right. He blinks the sleep from his eyes and waits for them to adjust to the dark. Across the small room and through the semi-obscured cabin window he can just make out the first glow of sunrise through the trees.

He feels the mattress dip and shift as Alex sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. Alex hunches over, curling into himself, and Michael watches him put his head in his hands, fingers coming to curl around the back of his neck. He shudders through several deep, half-suppressed breaths.

Michael can tell by the rigid set of his back that he’s slept badly. Even with an arms length of bed between them, Michael knows. He’s radiating a visible, nearly tangible tension. The kind of tension that moves through your body and leaves you cramping and stiff for hours after you wake. The kind that means Alex will revert to relying on his crutch all day. The kind that warrant the not-so-hidden bottle of muscle relaxants in the nightstand drawer that Alex thinks he doesn’t know about.

Michael’s becoming used to waking up in this bed. Lately he’s been splitting his time between his trailer in the auto yard and Alex’s tucked-away cabin. Alex’s hours at the base are pretty regular these days, and more often than not they find themselves seeking each other’s company. After all that’s happened, despite everything and everyone, they’ve somehow found their way here, and Michael can’t deny the flutter in his chest every time he returns home to find Alex there waiting for him.

It’s tentative, this thing between them, and feels as fragile at times as spun sugar. Alex at twenty-eight is not the same as he was at seventeen. He’s harsher, more guarded, as if the middle eastern sands have sharpened him to a razor’s point. When he does sleep he tends to sleep poorly and in uneven fits and starts. Alex has told him that this is not uncommon for returning vets, but goes into no more detail than that. Day by day and with each night spent together, though, he seems more settled, less agitated.

Michael doesn’t dare to hope that it’s because of him.

He reaches out a hand to smooth a path up Alex’s back - once, twice, again - kneading with the heel of his palm on each upstroke.

“Bad dream?” His voice comes out sleep-rough and scraped thin.

Alex’s head comes up and he turns to look at him, stiff and deliberate, as though every movement costs him something precious.

“It’s still early, go back to sleep.” He works up a smile, a barely-there quirk of his lips. His dark eyes look black, nearly fathomless in the dim.

Michael’s had his fair share of nightmares; he greets his trauma like an old friend when he closes his eyes at night. Growing up he was passed between the group home and half a dozen shitty fosters, each somehow worse than the last, until he finally, mercifully, aged out. At thirteen he covered up a murder. At seventeen he repeated the experience in triplicate. He’s gone days without food while his guts twisted and ached, he’s spent desperate nights waiting in vain for salvation under the desert sky, he’s watched, helpless, as a boy walked away and as his bones healed as crooked and gnarled as his heart. He understands what it’s like to relive it all night after night, to wake shaking and alone and filled with regret and useless anger.

He doesn’t know what Alex dreams about. He’s never asked and Alex has never told. He knows that if he did ask, Alex would tell him. Knows it with a bone-deep surety he can’t explain. He would allow Michael to draw every horror out of him like barbed arrows from a wound. He would bleed it all out between them for Michael to see. He would do it simply because Michael asked. It’s for this reason that Michael knows with that same sense of certainty that he never will.

Michael shakes his head. His unkempt hair falls into his eyes and he absently pushes it out of the way. “Nah. If you’re up, I’m up.”

Alex lets out an expansive breath, his dark eyes sweeping the small room restlessly. There are lines etched into his face that weren't there before.

Michael turns his roving palm into playful swipes of fingers. The touch surprises Alex and he squirms, ticklish, and Michael takes advantage of his distraction to haul himself up and slide closer, huddling himself against Alex’s smooth back. He loops an arm around Alex’s middle and pulls him flush against his chest.

“And I really don’t want to be up, so…” He mouths the soft spot behind Alex’s ear, tongues the salt from his skin.

Alex laughs, a small wisp of a thing, and tips his head back onto Michael’s shoulder. His hand lands on Michael’s bare thigh and his fingers brush tantalizingly close to his groin. He turns his head and his lips brush Michael’s ear when he speaks, “An unfortunate choice of words.”

Michael’s dick seems to consider this. He’s half hard already, but it’s not to a purpose. Not yet. Alex’s teeth close on the shell of his ear and he nips, gently, then soothes the bite with a swipe of his tongue. Michael scratches a light trail through the sparse line of hair below Alex’s navel.

A shiver runs up Alex’s spine, but it’s not entirely from his attentions. Goose flesh has risen on his arms and the nape of his neck, his skin cool to the touch. His shoulders are tense where they rest against Michael’s chest. Across the room the banked fire has burned itself out, and the cabin is cold outside of the warmth of their pile of blankets and quilt.

Michael remembers one of the social workers in the group home - a woman so tiny that Michael, then a skinny, underfed pre-teen, towered over her. She’d had a bad back, apparently aggravated by a car accident some years prior. When the cold snaps started and the barometer dipped Michael watched her struggle to walk or even stand without obvious pain.

With a quick pat to Alex’s belly, Michael heaves himself up and out of bed. The walk to the hearth is a brisk one, in both speed and temperature; the wood floor feels ice cold against his bare feet. With a modicum of concentration he levitates several logs from the stack and busies himself rebuilding and lighting the fire, quickly coaxing it to life. As he stands he catches a glimpse of the pink-hued sunrise through the window - and the white powder beginning to coat the sill.

“It’s snowing.”

“Really?” Alex turns and reaches to part the curtains to the window above the bed. “Shit, I didn’t know we were supposed to get snow. Good thing I don’t have to be on base today.”

He lets the curtain drop and settles face-down into the blankets again, tousled head on his folded arms. The blanket rests just at the curve of his lower back.

In his haste to get back to bed Michael’s foot catches on the corner of the rug and he’s forced to exert a small amount of power to catch himself. He clumsily knee-walks over Alex’s legs and crawls back under the blankets.

He rubs his chilled feet together and pokes his toes to Alex’s calf just to watch him squirm.

“Fuck! Your feet are freezing.” Alex twists and pulls his good leg up and away from him, mouth twisting into a little moue of annoyance.

“Mhmm,” Michael hums. He reaches out to brush some of Alex’s displaced hair up off his forehead - gently runs his thumbnail over the scar there. “You really need to re-caulk the window by the door, you’re getting a draft.”

Alex huffs and resettles his head on his folded arms. “Yeah, I’ll add it to my to-do list. Right behind fixing the porch stairs and filling the wood shed.”

“I could do it for you this weekend,” Michael says, deliberately casual, and rolls to his side, propping his head on his upturned palm. “I’ve got what you need, I’d just need to stop off at the junkyard.”

Alex purses his lips - seems to consider this. “Well,” he says, clearly amused, “How could I say no to an offer like that.”

“You’d be a fool to turn down free labor,” Michael agrees. He reaches down to tug the blanket over Alex’s exposed back - curls his arm over his waist.

“See, I knew there was a reason I keep you around.” Alex presses his mouth into a straight line, working to suppress a smile. He wiggles his fingers where they rest on the pillow near his cheek. “Your very skilled hands.”

Michael nods in agreement; feigns nonchalance. “I am very good with caulk.”

Alex barks out a surprised, inelegant laugh, his body shaking beneath Michael’s arm.

“Speaking of which,” Michael drawls, and his hand begins making lazy circles beneath the blanket, from the jut of shoulder blades to the dip of his lower back to the top of his thigh and back. “I think that we should just stay in bed all day. You know, really embrace the whole ‘Walden Pond’ atmosphere you’ve got going here.”

Alex’s eyes track Michael’s arm as it moves. His eyebrow lifts as Michael’s hand lingers on the small of his back. Lower. “Huh, somehow I don’t remember _this_ being in the book.” He looks up at him from the cradle of his arms, eyes bright with humor. “Though literature was really more Max’s thing, wasn’t it? Guess I’d have to ask him.”

Michael makes a face. “Please don’t say my brother’s name while my hand is on your ass.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. _Deputy Evans,_ then?” Alex turns to hide this laugh in his forearm.

Michael pauses in his petting only long enough to give Alex’s thigh a sharp pinch. Alex shifts enough to allow him to run conciliatory toes up Michael’s calf.

After a long moment Alex’s voice emerges, muffled against his arm. “Don’t you have to work this morning?”

“If we’re getting snow there’s not going to be anyone going to the junkyard.”

Alex pulls his closest arm away from his face. His mouth opens in mock surprise. “Guerin, are you playing hooky?”

“Consider it taking a personal day.”

Alex pushes up to his elbows and turns onto his side - Michael curls his arm around his waist. Alex nuzzles under Michael’s jaw, the soft scrape of his day-old stubble making Michael’s toes curl.

“Well, in that case...” He gives Michael’s chin a soft bite.

Michael grasps Alex’s thigh and hikes his leg up over his own, pulling their hips flush.

Alex goes tense. He tries to hide his visible wince by pressing his face into Michael’s throat. Michael freezes.

“You okay? Cramp?”

Alex shakes his head, “No, no. Just stiff. It’s okay.” His fingers clench and release where they rest on the back of Michael’s neck.

Michael runs his hand up Alex’s leg until he reaches the join of hip and thigh. He squeezes gently. Alex lets out a shuddery sigh.

He gives his hip another squeeze. “Roll over, I’ll rub your back.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to.” Alex’s fingers begin to sift restlessly through the mess of Michael’s hair.

“I want to.” Michael presses, palm urging him to roll onto his belly.

He meets Alex’s gaze. Holds it.

With a sigh Alex relents and he allows Michael to arrange him as he pleases with no further complaint. Michael pushes himself up, straddles Alex’s thighs, settles in.

He grips Alex’s hip with both hands and kneads slowly, thoroughly. He rubs for long minutes until, finally, he feels Alex start to relax again. Michael moves his attention to the small of Alex’s back and presses the palm of his good hand over his tailbone, bracing it with his weaker one. He runs both hands up the length of his spine, easing his way vertebra by vertebra.

Alex makes a tiny noise of pleasure, body loosening. Michael repeats the motion up his back. Again. Again. With each pass he feels Alex’s tension ease, feels the warmth of his palms sink into Alex’s flushed skin. He feels his spine elongate, his hips spread. He moves to the base of Alex’s neck, his shoulders, his biceps. His hand starts to ache with exertion, but he keeps at it until Alex is absolutely boneless beneath him, face slack with pleasure and on the verge of sleep.

Michael rolls off of him as smoothly as he can manage. Alex grunts at the loss of his weight and clumsily reaches for Michael, who obediently lifts his arm, and crawls into his embrace.

Michael tucks the blanket up around Alex’s shoulders and appreciates the heavy, exhausted weight against his chest. Alex takes Michael’s cramping hand where it rests against the sheets and pulls it close.

“Thank you,” he says, and presses each of Michael’s fingers to his lips in turn.

He starts to manipulate Michael’s fingers with his own, worrying at each knuckle with thumb and forefinger. The ache eases.

Michael turns his face into Alex’s messy hair and breathes him in.

Alex’s breathing evens, slows. His fingers go slack, still pressed to Michael’s own. Michael closes his eyes and lets sleep rise up to take him.

Outside, the snow continues to fall.

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in some nebulous half-imagined future where Alex knows about Michael, Isobel, and Max, and he and Michael are working things out. Other than that everything is made up and the plot don't matter. 
> 
> Fun fact: this fic, as nothing more than an exploration of intimacy, contains exactly no kissing on the mouth. 
> 
> visit me on tumblr @ nielrian


End file.
